…in the studio
photo: Marlene Kranz
My artwork is a mosaic of fragments, collected experiences, information, and images. I begin with an idea that’s allowed to develop unhindered to encompass anything from the serious to the absurd. No thought is isolated and the simplest can build upon itself. Layers of connected thoughts revealed in a succession of images link and multiply in evolving variations. I begin with words. Then I make a connection, a thin bridge, between words and their images, and other abstract and veiled yet related ideas. My artworks are often labyrinths of intricate wordplay.
The first composition I ever saw was framed by a window and the bars of my crib. I saw the black silhouettes of trees against the darkening sky, the tiny lights of stars above them and, incongruously, the large colorful spokes of a star-shaped neon Holiday Inn sign off to the left. The second composition was off to the right inside the same rose-colored room as the crib: three women singing framed by the box of a TV set.
As a toddler I was into details. I would sit with legs akimbo in the dirt of our driveway arranging rocks into patterns, search for exoskeletons of cicadas in the mossy shade of a large tree, and wander around the yard and into the woods examining every insect, flower, and leaf.
"Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one." - Denise Levertov
photo: Audrey Derell